Books like The Juniper Tree

The Juniper Tree is a retelling of the Grimm's fairy tale of the same name. Comyns' version is set in 1980s London, with the Juniper tree located in the garden of a large house in Richmond. That house and garden, and the couple who live there, are well described, and there's a definite fairy tale atmosphere surrounding them. The narrator, on the other hand, seems very rooted in the twentieth century (though it doesn't sound like the eighties to me but perhaps a few decades earlier).As I read on, I found it difficult to connect the rattling-along account of the narrator's everyday life (she runs a little antique shop while being a single mother to a three-year old) with the otherworldly atmosphere of the house in Richmond which she visits at the weekends. The two stories seemed to belong in different books. This was probably intentional and the author eventually weaves the two narratives tightly together, but by then I was no longer very interested in any of the characters—or in the writing. There are no sentences that made me stop and reread them, no interesting language or creative plotting. Everything is predictable, and I'm beginning to notice a kind of arch tone in Comyns' first person narrators that I find hard to relate to. The final straw for me came in the last section of the book when the author substituted a rational explanation for the most crucial element in the fairy story; I found myself wondering why she'd used the fairy story as a model in the first place. The only positive in this book for me was the little insights it gives into a time in Comyns' own life when she sold antiques. The Juniper Tree is my fourth Barbara Comyns in a row which may explain why I can't feel enthusiastic about it—though I've often read through the entire oeuvre of an author and not had this experience. I know I should now take a break from her writing but I have two more of her books on my book pile and I feel that if I don't read them now, I never will. So I've moved on to Our Spoons came from Woolworths which has a first person narrator with a very twee voice. I'm hoping she'll grow up a bit before too many more pages go by...